Set up usage-based billing with rate cardsPrivate Vorschau

Charge customers based on usage of your products or services with rate cards.

Use rate cards to model hundreds of pay-as-you-go usage-based prices and group them into a single rate card. Add new prices for new features to existing rate cards and roll them out to your existing customers immediately without writing any code.

This guide uses a fictional AI company called Alpaca AI to demonstrate how to create a pricing model with rate cards, subscribe a customer to the rate card, and record usage with meters.

Learn more about how rate cards work.

Private Vorschau

Rate cards are currently in private preview and could change in functionality and integration path before they’re generally available to all Stripe users. Sign up here to join the private preview.

Before you begin

Rate cards use API endpoints in the /v2 namespace, such as Rate card subscriptions v2. Learn more about the /v2 and /v1 namespaces.

Create a rate card

Use the Stripe Dashboard or API to create a rate card that includes different rates for each pricing option.

For example, Alpaca AI creates a rate card with:

Monthly service interval
USD currency
Tax not included in price
Metered price of 0.04 USD per hundred units

You need to associate each rate in a rate card with a meter.

Go to the Rate cards page. Click + Add rate card.
In the rate card editor, set up the rate card:
- Rate card name: Add a name for your rate card. For example, Alpaca AI.
- Service interval: Select a Service interval to the time period for customer access and specifies the rate at which a customer accumulates fees.
- Currency: Select the Currency.
- Tax behavior: Select whether to Include tax in prices. The default is to not include tax in prices.
- Click Continue.
In the next screen of the rate card editor, add a usage-based item:
- Metered item: Enter a name for your item. For example, Alpaca AI tokens.
- Meter: Select an existing Meter or create a new one by clicking +.
- Price configuration: Select the Price type: Fixed rate, Volume, or Graduated. For example, Alpaca AI uses Fixed rate.
  - Select whether Sell as Individual units or a Packaged group of units. For example, Alpaca AI sells their tokens as packages of 100 units, at 0.04 USD per package.
  - For packages, Enter the Units per package.
  - Select whether to round up or down for Partial packages. For example, Alpaca AI rounds up, so if a user uses 110 units, they’re charged 0.08 USD.
  - Enter the Price per package.
- (Optional) You can optionally configure Advanced settings for your item, like specifying a Product tax code (learn more about tax codes), Unit label, Lookup key, and Metadata. You can also add metadata to the rate.
- Click Save.
Click + to add another rate.
Click Create rate card.

Subscribe your customer to a rate card

After you create a rate card, you can start subscribing customers.

When you subscribe your customer to the rate card, you also define the billing cadence–how often to create invoices for your customer. When creating a billing cadence, you can specify collection settings using either charge_automatically or send_invoice. When charge_automatically is selected and an invoice is created, the customer’s default payment method is automatically charged. With the send_invoice option, customers will receive an invoice they need to pay manually.

Go to the Rate cards page and click the rate card you want to subscribe your customer to.
In the rate card details page, click the overflow menu () next to Edit rate card.
In the rate card subscription editor:
- Find or add a customer.
- Define the Billing cadence, which is how often to and when to send an invoice to the customer.
- Click Create subscription.

Record customer usage

After you subscribe a customer to a rate card, you can record their usage of your service, by sending meter events to a meter.

Go to the Rate card subscriptions tab.
Click the subscription you want to record usage for.
Click the overflow menu () in the row of the item you want to record usage for, then click View meter details.
In the meter details page, click + Add usage then select Manually input usage.
In the Add usage dialog:
- Select a customer.
- Enter a Value for the usage.
- Select a date for the Timestamp.
Click Submit.

Create a preview invoice

Create a preview invoice to see a preview of a customer’s invoice that includes details such as the meter price and usage quantity.

Go to the Rate card subscriptions tab.
Click the subscription you want to preview an invoice for.
Scroll down to the Upcoming invoice section. The preview invoice shows the subscription amount to bill the customer on the specified date.
Click View full invoice to see complete details for the upcoming invoice, including:
- Customer
- Billing method
- Creation date
- Connected subscription
- Subscription details (usage quantity and meter price)
- Amount due
Because Stripe processes meter events asynchronously, upcoming invoices might not immediately reflect recently received meter events.

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